The Power of Pausing: How Mindful Communication Transforms Conversations

August 17, 2024

TRANSCRIPT

While we're on this topic, also, we were talking before we started recording about people who talk too much and talk mindlessly.

Yeah. So we spend a lot of time talking about listening. This has kinda come up at different at different periods, but, you know, we have people that will dominate a meeting or a dinner conversation or, you know, any any conversation, a friendship, or, you know, I'm saying that sometimes when I'm gonna walk, the person I walk with doesn't seem to notice that she has been doing all the talking for a long period of time. And if I can't wedge in literally, I have to interrupt her.

If I can't do that, then she she might not know so I'm not saying she does it all the time. It's what I noticed recently was, well, she's a very interesting person. She has a she's very smart. She has a lot of interesting things to talk about.

At the end of my walk with her, I felt very it's not that satisfying. And I think that that's an important thing for us to understand that if someone doesn't have an opportunity to speak so this could be in a one on one conversation or it could be in a team setting.

If someone has literally sat there and been a listener the entire time and never got to vocalize anything, there can be a sense of being ignored or not being included.

So that that could feel like being excluded. It can also just feel like you you you got energy kinda zapped out of you. Like, the person took energy.

You didn't get it didn't get fulfilled back. And I know if you're an introvert, maybe you don't feel the need to speak, but I do believe that we need to be more mindful of who in this group isn't speaking. Yeah. Some people think, well, I'm the one that's gonna talk. Right? It's always gonna be me. Well, maybe it's because you don't give anybody space.

Mhmm. There's something that I read a long time ago about this idea and the pause, pausing for a for a long enough time that a quieter person or someone who hasn't spoken yet gets an opportunity to speak.

If the pause is not long enough, they won't feel the invitation of it. It's almost like the pause is an invitation and that you know, you gotta give enough time for someone else to chime in.

Yeah. And as someone who has been on stages and presented, I always notice when I'm on stage and I leave a pause, like, for comedic effect or whatever, it feels so much longer to me than it does to them. And then I watch back a recording and I go, oh, that was, like, two seconds.

But it felt like thirty to me. It felt like forever to me. So try to remember that when I'm leading that sometimes I count in my head. Just leave at least fifteen seconds before I prod again or something like that because I know.

Plus on Zoom, you gotta get off mute. So you gotta just you have to you have to go through a lot of I have to decide I'm going to say something. Yeah. I have to decide what I'm gonna say, and then I have to do that.

It's a lot. Such a good point. Like, Eve, there's more barriers on Zoom. There's barriers internal barriers anyway to commune speaking if you haven't spoken.

If you're not that person that always just goes, oh, it's me. I'll talk. You know? And and I I always try to watch depending on how many people are on the Zoom call.

I I will tend to notice if someone leans forward like they're doing and and say, were you gonna say something? But that's a really, really good point. I went to a therapist years ago. I mean, this was a really off putting experience, but it taught me something.

He wouldn't start the session. He would sit there and wait.

Oh my god.

And until you spoke, there was so much silence in it that I I you know, eventually, I would start talking. And the idea of it was that, you know, if the client starts to talk first, then it start it the the conversation goes more in the direction that they need to take it in rather than the therapist sort of taking control.

So it was it was a technique, I guess, but I remember how that was pretty effective in just waiting. So I think we don't use pausing enough or considerate because people get nervous. They get antsy. They think no one talking is a bad thing. Yeah.

And I don't mind to me.

Yeah. No. I can I can be with a lot of subs? Actually, that that coach that coach I mentioned, my friend Adam, he told me he was facilitating something and people were not responding.

And he just said to them, and now you all experience my tremendous capacity to be with silence. That's just happened. I tend to warn people at the top. I'm like, just so y'all know, you know, those awkward pauses that happen.

I haven't done this in different from the inside out, but I've done it, like, elsewhere. I don't consider them awkward. I consider the moments for you all to be thinking, and I'm not going to interrupt and keep talking. I'm gonna wait for someone.

In fact, I should say that at the start of DFIO just tell people, this is what's gonna happen. Don't feel the need to fill space, but use it as time to think and then share something, and we'll have a conversation.

While we're just touching on all this, I think it's important also.

When we do our trainings virtually, cameras are on. Oh, yeah. Always. And so, you know, I've been talking about this a lot and have had people really acknowledge, like, how what a relief it is to to have everybody have their camera on.

Mhmm. Because they're told everyone has to have their camera on. So it's not a personal decision you're making. It's a prerequisite or rec you know, an important aspect of the class.

You know? Because the communication, the visual conversations, the speaking and the listening, you know, you looking at me and shaking your head and me talking, we're communicating nonverbally a lot.

Right? If you had your camera off and I had my camera on so it's not like the telephone. It's not like everybody has their camera off. It's you know, some people do, some people don't. I think it has a negative impact.

I think the the best thing is cameras on everybody.

Now maybe not every single meeting. I mean, I I told the group this week, okay. But if you don't have to have your camera on, maybe you don't need to be at the meeting because you're probably not really in the meeting anyway. You're doing other things.

Let's be real. You're doing emails. You're feeding the dog. I don't even know. Like, you're you're writing you're you're texting.

You're working. You're multitasking.

You probably shouldn't even be in the meeting. How do you set up communication to work is as important as, like, you set you getting the bed prepped for your daughter to lay in. She's gonna sleep better. Right? We know that these things are important.

And then for some reason around communication, we pay little attention to, you know, the setup.

Details like that. Yeah. I I love getting a few sessions in with a group where it's all everyone knows camera's on. We don't have to say it.

And then if anyone goes off camera, they put in the chat why. They're like, hey. I'm just I'm taking a few bites of lunch. I don't want everyone to be looking at my mouth chewing.

I am here.

Great. Or UPS just came to the door. I will be right back or something. We so we set it up at the start. Tell us tell us what's happening in your world. Let us in. Let us know, and then we won't be wondering where you are.

In that way, you're taking care of your relationship Mhmm.

With the group and with the group's listening of you. Right? Because it's very easy to start thinking that person's disengaged. They're not committed. They're not into this. They're doing other things. But if they're announcing, right, I'll be right back, people are, like, great.

Everybody knows. Yeah. It's also why I don't call on people to put them on the spot or call them out. It's more like I'm even as the facilitator, I'm looking at this person's face, and I can't tell what's happening over there. So I'll be like, Josh, what are your thoughts? You know? And then Josh comes off mute and starts talking, and it's like there was a whole world going on over there, but all I saw was so I had no idea, and I noticed it was affecting my abilities.

Oh, that's all that training.

Wow. I watch people listen a lot. But it's like, I notice my little voice is so loud about what is with what's going on over there with that guy. So I'll ask because I let's I don't have to say it in a way that's accusatory.

It's just if I'm feeling it great if people did that in a meeting meeting.

You know? If people just said, hey, Michelle. What's happening over there? You look like you're bored.

You're I I am dying to know your thoughts. How many times do we actually think that? Or, unfortunately, what we think is, I think I know what you're thinking, rather than just asking, right, that that kind of curiosity and saying, what is it that's going on over there? Because and you might say, hey.

I'm just processing this information, and I think this is a bad idea, or this is a great idea. You know?

Yes. I'm used to it in other work that I do because you can't this other company I work with, you can't show up to a meeting and have anything going on and not have everyone notice because everyone's trained to notice things like that. Unfortunately, sometimes that leads to people getting better at pretending. Yeah.

But it's still there no one's that good at it. No one can possibly I I've just come to a point where I'm like, if something's going on with me, it will be best for me to get on the Zoom and tell everyone that something's going on with me. And they'll say, what do you need? And I'm like, I actually, I don't need anything right now.

I wanna be here on the meeting. I might be a little less vocal. Okay. Great.

Let's move on now. And now we've taken it out of the space because before, it was clearly in the space. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm a fan of asking.